Posted on 06/03/2009 9:55:21 PM PDT by naturalman1975
DEFENCE Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has resigned from his portfolio. Mr Fitzgibbon resigned after it was revealed that he had instructed an Army general to meet with a US Insurance company, of which his brother Mark is an employee, Sky News reports.
Major-General Paul Alexander, who is in charge of defence health services, told a parliamentary committee that staff of a junior minister and defence staff told him to attend the meetings with Mark Fitzgibbon, the chief executive of insurer NIB Health.
The resignation comes after revelations of the meeting was made during a Senate Estimates hearing last night.
Having read through the proceedings (of a committee hearing), I decided to thoroughly examine the nature of the contact, Mr Fitzgibbon reportedly wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Mr Rudd said that Mr Fitzgibbon handed in his resignation at 1pm (AEST) today.
In a letter to Mr Rudd, Mr Fitzgibbon said to protect the integrity of the Government, he had decided to resign as defence minister effective immediately.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Initially, that seems a pretty innocuous request if the brother isn’t in upper management.
If it was just the one incident, he’d have weathered it.
But this is the third significant ‘semi-scandal’.
Any of them by themselves were survivable. All of them together - that changes things.
You don’t muck around with Michael Savage.
What’s Savage’s involvement in this?
resigned after it was revealed that he had instructed an Army general to meet with a US Insurance company, of which his brother Mark is an employee
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.